Tag Archives: Lord Byron

Byron, Shelley & Greek Independence

By Robin Bates | Published: April 20, 2021

A case can be made that Byron and Shelley poems had a tangible effect on the 1820s Greek rebellion.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Hellas", "Isles of Greece", Greece, Greek independence, Percy Bysshe Shelley | Comments closed

Winter’s Assyrian Invasion

By Robin Bates | Published: February 4, 2019

Monday When the polar vortex descended on the United States last week, the opening lines from Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” came to mind. While I’d memorized the stanza in high school to learn anapestic meter (short-short-long), it captures the emotional force of extreme weather events. (Another Byron poem that does so is “Darkness”) […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Destruction of Senacherib", climate change, extreme weather events, polar vortex | Comments closed

Byron’s Climate Change Nightmare

By Robin Bates | Published: December 20, 2018

Wednesday News about climate change grows grimmer by the month, with the latest governmental reports predicting that extreme weather events will kill thousands while devastating national economies. I therefore share today a 19th century climate change poem although, in this instance, the climate grows colder rather than warmer. In 1816 the world experienced “the year without […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Darkness", climate change, extreme weather events | Comments closed

Imagining Little Ocean’s Future

By Robin Bates | Published: October 22, 2018

Looking for the literary significance of my latest grandchild, I turn to Walcott, Whitman, Masefield, Coleridge, and Byron. What emerges is a mystical seeker.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", "Sea Fever", "Tales of the Islands", baby names, Derek Walcott, J. D. Salinger, John Masefield, John Milton, Laurence Sterne, Lucille Clifton, Paradise Lost, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, To Esme with Love and Squalor, Tristram Shandy, Walt Whitman, William Blake | Comments closed

Nature Lit Has Healed for Centuries

By Robin Bates | Published: December 5, 2017

For years my Intro to Lit class has had a nature theme.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bacchae, Barbara Kingsolver, climate change, environmental issues, Euripides, Flight Behavior, John Keats, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucille Clifton, Margaret Atwood, Mary Oliver, Midsummer Night's Dream, nature poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Wendell Berry, William Blake, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Year of the Flood | Comments closed

The Pleasure of a Pathless Wood

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2015

For Americans, wilderness is a more unkempt affair than it for Europeans.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alexander Pope, Childe Harold, Evangeline, forests, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nature, Romanticism, wilderness, Windsor Forest | Comments closed

Crossing (or Not) the Hellespont

By Robin Bates | Published: December 7, 2013

I revisited Byron’s poem about swimming the Hellespont/Dardanelles after a friend tried the feat.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos", Sports, swimming | Comments closed

Roll On, Thou Alabama Crimson Tide, Roll

By Robin Bates | Published: December 22, 2012

Byron’s “deep and dark blue ocean” rolls on and so does the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Roll On Thou Deep and Dark Blue Ocean", "To the Terrestial Globe", Football, University of Alabama, W.S. Gilbert | Comments closed

Can Poetry Be Bad for You?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 2, 2012

The possibility that poetry can have a deleterious effect on one (the poetry of Scott and Byron anyway) is a possibility that Austen brings up in “Persuasion.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Soldier Rest", Jane Austen, Persuasion, reading, Sir Walter Scott, Wayne Booth | Comments closed